Digital Marketing

Content Marketing – What is good marketing content?

As we delve further into HubSpot and content marketing in class, I began to ponder what is the difference between good and bad marketing content. How do marketers create content that is meaningful but still engaging for customers to view?

Content marketing is all about informing customers and giving them potential answers or solutions to questions they have instead of interrupting their experience. As Kane talked about in his blog, there are a lot of changes happening in digital marketing. Specifically the shift towards mixed format content to present information to customers which I feel is incredibly accurate. Customers now days need informative, engaging, and remarkable content this is unique. We live in an age where an unprecedented amount of information is at our fingertips. In the graphic below, there are some stats on content marketing which emphasize it’s increasing importance.

“More content is being created in 48 hours than what was produced from the beginning of time until 2003.” – Eric Schmidt

As digital marketing becomes more prevalent, the use of videos, podcasts, graphic designs and even blogs are incredibly important for businesses and can increase their following and can even increase their profits. HubSpot defines a business blog as “a collection of articles that provide helpful, valuable, educational, and remarkable content to your target audience. By providing this value, blogs can easily and effectively draw prospects to your website.”

Here are some tips from HubSpot to keep in mind for writing a business blog:

Keep the title to (55 characters) max

Include a meta description about your blog post and keep it to (140 characters) max

To be more searchable, include image file name, Alt tags, links and tags

Focus on mobile optimization and making sure your blog is compatible with various browsers

Blog frequently and consistently – ideally you should be blogging once a day

Here are some stats from the HubSpot video on 79% of marketers with a company blog reported inbound ROI for 2013 and 43% of companies acquired customer through a blog. These stats illustrate the ever growing importance of blogging for a business and the impact it has on your customers.

A key factor in content marketing is knowing who your audience is and tailoring your content to fit their needs. For example, both Dove and Axe are owned by Unilever. Both of these brands hold very different brand images and their target markets differ drastically. If Axe was to use the same type of video story marketing content, like the Dove campaign sketches (there video story is below), they wouldn’t be accurately creating content that would target their audience.

As stated above, it’s essential for businesses to create content that’s informative, engaging, and even personal for their target audience. In the two YouTube clips below, Dove has two videos that have personal and engaging content that isn’t related to their products and advertising.

More well known is the video below, which is the Dove Beauty Sketches video. I personally shared this video via Facebook a few years ago because I thought it was an inspirational video and represented a powerful message.

In both of the videos above, Dove isn’t explicitly advertising their product and conveying how it will solve your problem. However, they are creating powerful content that is engaging and sends a message to their existing customers and potential customers. Dove is also creating an image for themselves that their brand will be associated with. Since the video aired, I’ve heard many people refer to Dove as the brand who care about creating good body image among women. I’ve also had people ask “Have you watched that video with the sketches by Dove?”. This sort of content marketing creates positive buzz around their products and naturally makes people think about their brand next time they’re shopping for body wash.

Another important aspect of creating content is making sure it’s searchable. SEO, search engine optimization, is essential. As a business you can create the best content in the world but if people can’t find it in search engines it’s useless.

Another example of a content marketing campaign is the campaign Microsoft made for their product OneNote. Microsoft utilized various social media platforms and various well known individuals to market their new product and to make it more appealing to their newly defined target market, students. However, the video they created below wasn’t a 30 second advertisement on the product, but instead Microsoft told an engaging story about the power of OneNote and how it can transform the process of team collaboration to produce phenomenal products, such as bionic arms for children. I found this to be a powerful way to create content marketing because the video illustrates the power of OneNote through showing the product in action and it didn’t mention the specifications of the product once.

Creating marketing content is a fundamental necessary for any business. Each business needs to assess their target audience and create content that is engaging, informative, and in my opinion tells a personal story of why they should choose your product or business. What sets your business apart from the rest? What’s the story you want your business to be known for?